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EUGENICS 


•By  IRVING  FISHER,  Ph.  D. 

'rofessor    of    Political   Economy   Yale   Uni  = 

versity       Member  Board  of  Scientific 

Directors-Eugenic  Record  Office 


Reprinted  from  GOOD   HEALTH   MAGAZINE 
November,  1913 

Good  Health  Publishing  Co., 
Battle  Creek,   Mich. 


\\G 


-  . 


EUGENICS 


By  IRVING  FISHER,  Ph.  D. 

Professor  of  Political  Economy,  Yale  University;  Member 
Board  of  Scientific  Directors,  Eugenics  Record  Office 


HAVE  SOMETIMES  SAID  THAT  EU- 
GENICS IS  HYGIENE  RAISED  TO  THE 
HIGHEST  POWER.  It  is  a  comparatively 
new  movement,  but  one  which  is  sweeping  over 
the  world  with  wonderful  rapidity,  and  taking 
hold  of  the  emotions  of  mankind  in  a  way  that 
no  other  movement  has  ever  done,  or  has  deserved  to  do. 

THIRST  OF  ALL,  what  is  eugenics?  Eugenics,  as  the  Greek 
•*•  derivation  of  the  word  shows,  means  the  science  of  right 
breeding.  The  word  was  invented  by  Sir  Francis  Galton,  of 
England,  to  express  his  ideal  founding  a  world  movement  to 
improve  the  human  race.  It  was,  of  course,  a  colossal  ambition, 
and,  at  first  almost  everybody  scoffed.  Even  today  there  are 
comparatively  few  who  realize  how  immediately  practical  is 
this  dream  of  Sir  Francis  Galton's. 

TJ  UGENICS  DOES  NOT  MEAN,  as  many  people  at  first  thought, 
anything  like  the  old  Spartan  practice  of  infanticide.  The 
Spartans  tried  to  develop  a  strong,  physical  race  according  to 
their  ideals,  and  they  succeeded,  but  they  did  it  in  a  cruel 
fashion  by  ruthlessly  exposing  children  when  born.  Infanticide 
has  been  practiced  in  many  of  the  barbarous  countries  of  the 
world,   and  when  eugenics   was  proposed,   many  people  very 

283985 


2  Eugenics 

naturally  imagined  this  was  what  it  meant.  But  it  does  not. 
Nor  does  eugenics  propose  to  do  violence  in  any  other  way  to 
any  humanitarian  or  Christian  effort.  Eugenics  does  not  mean, 
as  some  have  imagined,  compulsory  or  government-made  mar- 
riages. Some  people  have  thought  that  eugenics  was  some  half- 
baked  scheme  to  breed  the  human  race  as  we  breed  domestic 
animals,  and  to  make  a  race  of  pug-noses  or  blond  hair  or  blue 
eyes  or  any  other  fancy  that  some  master  of  ceremonies  should 
conceive.  Nor  does  it  mean  a  reduction  in  the  proportion  of 
love  marriages.  On  the  contrary,  it  means  an  increase  of  such 
marriages.  Just  as  soon  as  men  and  women  come  to  see  and  ad- 
mire, as  in  ancient  Greece,  the  ideal  of  physical  perfection  they 
will  fall  in  love  on  that  basis,  as  nature  always  intended  that 
they  should.  There  will  be  less  interference  with  love  mar- 
riages through  ambition  to  acquire  property  or  tirfe. 

Eugenics  is  simply  an  application  of  modern  science  to  im- 
prove the  human  race.  "But,"  says  the  skeptic,  "that  will 
take  millions  of  years!"  Nevertheless,  I  reassert  that  it  is 
easily  practical  to  alter  and  improve  the  human  race  and  to  do 
so  in  a  very  short  time. 

THIS  IS  THE  NEW  OPTIMISM  OF  EUGENICS  and  it  is  based 
on  solid  evidence.  Until  recently  no  one  realized  how  fast 
the  race  could  improve  if  it  rvould.  Even  Galton  himself, 
when  he  first  proposed  eugenics,  was  under  the  impression  that 
we  inherit  from  our  ancestors  in  a  way  which  would  make 
possible  improvement  extremely  slow.  He  put  forward  as  a 
theory  (what  we  now  know  to  be  incorrect)  that  each  child 
gets  half  of  its  nature  from  its  parents,  one  quarter  from  its 
grandparents,  one-eighth  from  its  great  grandparents,  one- 
sixteenth  from  its  great  great  grandparents,  and  so  on  indefinitely 
back,  the  sum  total  of  those  fractions  being,  when  added  up  to 
infinity,  just  unity  or  the  whole  inheritance.  Instead  of  such  a 
relation  Jiolding  true,  however,  we  know  that  a  child  inherits 


Eugenics  3 

something  from  both  parents  in  relation  to  every  character  of 
body  or  mind,  and  that  the  something  which  it  inherits  from  its 
mother,  as  by  its  mother  inherited  from  one  (not  both)  of 
its  mother's  parents,  and  likewise  the  something  which  it  in- 
herited from  the  father,  was  inherited  from  one  (not  both)  of  the 
father's  parents,  and  so  on  in  two  streams  on  either  side,  from 
each  parent  backward.  Thus  each  individual  today  is  in  respect 
to  any  one  characteristic  (such,  for  example  as  eye-color)  simply 
a  combination  of  two  beings  in  any  previous  generation.  One 
generation  back,  it  is  the  two  parents  from  whom  he  gets  his 
eye-color;  two  generations  back  it  is  two  out  of  its  four  grand- 
parents and  not  the  other  two  at  all;  three  generations  back, 
it  is  two  of  its  great  grandparents  and  not  the  other  six  at  ahV 
Consequently,  if  you  can  carry  back  your  inheritance  to  some- 
one who  came  over  in  the  Mayflower,  the  chances  are  a  thous- 
and to  one,  that  you  did  not  inherit  any  given  character,  such  as 
eye-color,  from  that  ancestor  at  all..  In  fact,  you  may  have 
absolutely  nothing  in  mind  or  body  which  came  from  him.  The 
marvelous  laws  of  inheritance  are  "now  being  fairly  well  ex- 
plained and  understood.  They  were  discovered  first  by  a 
priest  named  Mendel,  in  the  year  1869.  But  when  he  gave 
his  discovery  to  the  world,  he  found  the  world  was  blind  and 
deaf,  as  it  often  is  to  new  discoveries,  and  it  waited  until  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  when  DeVries  and  other 
scientists  re-discovered  the  Mendelian  principle,  which  today  is 
the  foundation  stone  of  the  science  of  heredity  and  eugenics. 

WE  CAN  BEST  UNDERSTAND  MENDEL'S  LAWS  by  taking 
a  few  concrete  cases.  The  first  case  is  that  of  an  And- 
alusian  fowl.  We  shall  consider  the  two  species,  pure  bred 
black  and  pure  bred  white  and  confine  ourselves  to  observing 
the  inheritance  of  the  single  characteristic,  color.  Of  course, 
as  long  as  the  black  mate  only  with  the  black  their  children 
will  be  black  and  as  long  as  the  white  mate  with  white  the 


4  Eugenics 

children  will  be  white.  But  if  a  white  mates  with  a  black,  the 
children  will  not  be  either  black  or  white,  but  blue.  All  will 
be  blue.  But  the  most  interesting  facts  appear  in  the  next 
generation  when  these  hybrid  blue  fowls  mate  with  black  or  the 
white  or  with  each  other.  The  original  of  the  cross  between  the 
white  and  the  black  is  an  entirely  new  color,  blue,  which  may 
be  considered  a  sort  amalgam  of  black  and  white.  But  a 
cross  between  the  blue  and  the  black  will  not  be  any  new  color, 
but  will  be  either  black  or  blue — and  the  chances  are  even. 
That  is,  in  the  long  run  about  half  of  the  children  of  blue  and 
black  parents  will  be  blue  and  half  will  be  black.  None  of  the 
children  will  be  white.  So  also  crossing  the  blue  with  the 
white  will  result  in  half  of  the  children  being  blue  and  half 
white.  Still  more  curious  is  the  result  of  mating  blue  with 
blue.  One  might  imagine  that  in  this  case  all  the  children  would 
be  blue,  but  only  half  will  be  blue,  while  a  quarter  will  be 
black  and  a  quarter  white* 

HT^HESE  LAWS  SEEM  STRANGE  but  at  bottom  they  a"re  simply 
**"  the  familar  laws  of  chance,  the  laws  which  rule  heads  and 
tails  in  coin  tossing.  Two  parents  are  like  two  baskets  or 
bundles  of  traits  from  which  the  child  takes  its  traits  at  ran- 
dom. In  the  wonderful  play  of  Maeterlinck's,  called  the  "Blue- 
bird," we  are  taken  to  the  "land  before  birth,"  where  the  chil- 
dren are  waiting  to  be  born,  having  selected  their  parents  to  be. 
Of  course,  this  is  only  a  pleasant  fancy,  like  the  advice  of 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  to  children  to  choose  good  grand 
parents,  but  it  is  a  useful  fancy  which  will  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  laws  of  heredity.  The  child  of  the  Andalusian  fowl 
takes  its  color  from  its  two  parents  on  the  same  principle  as  a 
lottery  in  which  it  would  take  two  beans,  white  or  black  as  the 
case  might  be,  from  each  of  two  baskets.  Every  individual  is 
a  sort  of  basket  containing  two  beans,  as  it  were.  It  took  one 
of  these  two  beans  from  each  parent  and  will  give  one  to  each 
child. 


Eugenics  5 

WITH  THIS  PICTURE  OF  A  BEAN  LOTTERY  before  us  it  is 
•  very  easy  to  understood  how  the  colors  of  Andalusian 
fowls  are  inherited.  When  two  black  fowls  mate  the  offspring 
must  be  black,  because  in  this  case  each  parent  basket  contains 
a  pair  of  black  beans  so  to  speak,  so  that  the  child  taking  one 
black  bean  from  each  basket  will  necessarily  have  a  black  pair. 
For  the  same  reason  the  child  of  two  white  fowls  must  be  white. 
But  when  a  black  and  white  fowl  mate  the  child  takes  a  white 
bean  from  one  parent  and  a  black  from  the  other,  its  own  color 
being  a  resultant  or  amalgam  of  the  two,  which  in  the  case  of 
the  Andalusian  fowl  makes  blue.  Since  every  such  hybrid  child 
has  this  same  combination  of  a  white  and  a  black  bean  all  of 
these  hybrids  are  alike.  All  are  blue.  It  is  important  to 
remember  that  this  hybrid  blue  is  only  a  sort  of  mechanical 
mixture  of  black  and  white,  and  that  the  black  and  white  are 
still  separate  beans,  as  it  were. 

"D  UT  NOW  SUPPOSE  A  HYBRID  OR  BLUE  FOWL  to  mate  with 
■*-*  a  white.  This  means  that  the  child  takes  from  the  white 
parent  or  basket  one  of  .the  two  white  beafts  and  from  the  blue 
parent  or  basket  one  of  the  two  beans  of  which  one  is  white  and 
the  other  black;  the  bean  taken  from  the  first  or  white  basket 
must  be  white,  but  that  taken  from  the  second  or  blue  or  hybrid 
basket  may  be  either  white  or  black.  It  is  a  lottery  with  an 
even  chance  of  drawing  white  or  black.  In  the  long  run  half  of 
the  children  will  draw  white  and  half  black.  Those  which 
draw  the  white  will,  since  they  also  drew  white  from  the  other 
parent,  be  wholly  white,  but  those  which  drew  the  black  will  be 
blue^  since  they  will  have  one  black  and  one  white  bean.  We 
see  too  that  the  white  child  is  just  as  truly  white  as  though  it 
had  not  had  a  hybrid  parent,  for  of  the  two  elements  or  beans 
which  the  hybrid  carried,  the  black  one  was  left  behind  untaken. 
We  see  that  the  blue  child  is  a  hybrid  exactly  like  its  hybrid 
parent,  and  not  any  new  kind  of  cross  between  the  blue  and  the 


6  Eugenics 

white.  In  short,  the  children  of  a  blue  and  white  are  either  the 
one  or  the  other,  and  not  a  mixture.  In  the  same  way  if  a  blue 
mates  with  a  black,  half  of  the  children  will  be  black  and  half 
blue. 

TJINALLY  WE  COME  TO  THE  MATING  OF  A  BLUE  WITH  A 
**•  BLUE.  Here  the  lottery  is  to  pick  a  bean  from  two  baskets, 
each  basket  containing  a  white  and  a  black  bean.  When  at 
random  one  is  taken  from  either  of  these  two  baskets  there  is 
an  even  chance  that  the  bean  from  the  father  is  white  or  black 
and  an  even  chance  that  the  bean  from  the  mother  is  white  or 
black. 

1^  OW,  what  is  the  chance  that  the  child  draws  a  white  bean 
■*-^  from  both  baskets?  Evidently  it  is  one  chance  in  four; 
for  there  are  four  ways  equally  probable  in  which  you  can  take 
these  beans,  viz. :  ( 1  )  black  from  the  father  basket  and  black 
from  the  mother,  (2)  white  from  the  father  and  white  from 
the  mother,  (3)  white  from  the  father  ancT black  from  the 
mother,  (4)  black  from  the  father  and  white  from  the  mother. 
So  the  children  could  draw  both  white  once  in  four  times,  both 
black  once  in  four,  and  a  white  and  a  black  in  the  other  two 
cases.  And  that  is  why  from  two  blue  Andalusian  fowls,  on 
the  average  you  will  have  one-quarter  of  the  children  black,  one- 
quarter  white,  and  the  other  two-quarters,  blue.  Again  let  us 
stop  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  black  children  of  these  hybrids 
are  just  as  pure  blooded  as  their  black  grandparent,  and  will 
mate  with  other  pure-blooded  black  in  exactly  the  same  way  as 
though  there  had  never  been  any  white  in  their  ancestry.  The 
white  strain  has  been  left  behind,  or  been  "bred  out." 

YjJ/E  HAVE  SPOKEN  OF  ONE  CHARACTER  or  characteristic — 

™     color.     The  same  laws  apply  to  other  characters.     Often 

different  characters  are  inherited  quite  independently  of  one  an- 


Eugenics  7 

other.  Each  of  us  is  a  basket  or  bundle  of  very  many  qualities, 
each  quality  being  a  little  compartment  of  the  basket  with  two 
beans  in  it.  There  is,  as  it  were,  a  pair  of  beans  for  every  unit 
trait,  whether  that  trait  relates  to  color,  to  musical  ability,  or  to 
any  one  of  hundreds  of  other  kinds. 


*HpO  SUMMARIZE  THE  LAWS  OF  INHERITANCE  of  the  unit 
**"  character  called  color  in  Andalusian  fowl,  we  have  really 
six  ways  in  which  we  can  consider  the  mating  of  the  three 
colored  fowls  (black,  white,  blue)  :  ( 1  )  black  may  mate  with 
black,  in  which  case  all  the  offspring  will  be  black,  (2)  white 
may  mate  with  white  in  which  case  all  the  offspring  will  be 
white,  (3)  a  black  may  mate  with  a  white,  in  which  case  the 
offspring  will  all  be  blue — a  hybrid  containing  both  black  and 
blue  elements,  (4)  blue  may  mate  with  a  black,  in  which  case 
half  the  offspring  will  be  pure  bred  black,  and  half  hybrid  blue, 
(5)  a  blue  may  mate  with  a  white,  in  which  case  half  the  off- 
spring will  be  white  and  half  blue,  (6)  blue  may  mate  with 
blue  in  which  case  a  quarter  of  the  offspring  will  be  white,  a 
quarter  black  and  a  half  blue. 

These  results  are  the  fundamental  laws  of  Mendel.  But  the 
results  are  not  always  as  clear  as  in  the  case  of  the  Andalusian 
fowl.  In  that  case  tfce  hybrids  were  not  like  either  parent,  but 
were  a  new  color,  blue,  so  that  they  were  labeled  at  once  and 
recognizable  as  hybrids — but  this  is  not  generally  the  case. 
Take,  for  instance,  guinea  pigs.  What  will  be  the  result  of  mat- 
ing an  "albino"  white  with  a  black  guinea  pig?  Quite  exactly 
the  same  principle  applies  as  in  the  case  of  the  Andalusian  fowl, 
but  the  principle  is  not  as  clear  to  see.  All  the  offspring  are 
hybrid,  but  they  will  not  be  blue:  they  will  be  black.  They  will 
look  like  the  black  parent,  but  they  are  different.  The  black 
color  predominates;  i.  e.,  black  is  "dominant"  over  white,  while 
the  white  recedes  out  of  sight,  or  is  "recessive."     This  hybrid 


8  Eugenics 

black  guinea  pig  is  like  the  hybrid  blue  Andalusian  fowl.  It 
is  a  hybrid,  a  combination  of  white  and  black,  but  in  the  guinea 
pig  the  black  covers  up  the  white  so  that  nothing  in  the  color  re- 
veals the  fact  that  it  is  a  hybrid.  Now  if  the  hybrid  black 
offspring  of  these  black  and  white  guinea  pigs  mate  with  each 
other,  the  result  will  follow  exactly  the  same  Mendelian  law  as 
applied  to  the  Andalusian  fowl.  But  this  will  not  be  so  clear, 
because  now  we  have  two  kinds  of  black  instead  of  a  black  and 
a  blue.  One  child  in  four  will  be  white  like  the  grandparent. 
One  child  in  four  will  be  pure  bred  black  like  the  grandparent, 
and  two  out  of  the  four  will  be  hybrid  black.  So  to  the  eye  we 
shall  simply  have,  out  of  four  children,  one  white  and  three 
black.  But  those  three  black  are  not  all  alike.  One  is  a 
thoroughbred  and  two  are  half-breeds. 

DUT  HOW  THEN  ARE  WE  TO  DISTINGUISH  between  the  one 
pure  bred  black,  the  thoroughbred,  and  the  two  blacks  that 
are  hybrids  so  that  we  can  be  sure  which  is  which?  The  only 
way  they  can  be  distinguished  is  to  wait  to  see  what  their  off- 
spring will  be  in  the  next  succeeding  generations.  The  one  that 
is  a  thoroughbred  will  behave  like  a  thoroughbred.  For  in- 
stance, if  mated  with  white  they  will  have  nothing  but  black 
children.,  But  if  one  that  is  hybrid  black  mate  with  one  that  is 
white  only  half  of  the  children  will  be  white;  these  white 
children  reveal  the  fact  that  their  black  parent  was  a  half  breed. 
Then  we  can  put  a  tag  on  that  black  parent.  If  proper  tags  are 
put  on  the  blacks  so  as  to  distinguish  between  the  pure  blooded 
and  the  half  blooded — say  a  blue  tag  on  the  hybrids  and  a 
black  on  the  thoroughbreds, — we  shall  get  exactly  the  same 
results  as  described  in  the  case  of  the  Andalusian  fowl,  in  the 
six  cases  mentioned.  The  same  principles  apply  to  qualities  of 
guinea  pigs  other  than  color.  Thus  if  a  long-haired  guinea  pig 
mates  with  a  short-haired  guinea  pig,  all  the  offspring  will  be 
short-haired,  because  short  hair  is  dominant  over  long  hair. 
Again  if  a  smooth  coated  guinea  pig  mates  with  a  rough  coated 


Eugenics  9 

one   the   result   will   be   rough   coated,    because    a    rough   coat 
is  dominant  over  a  smooth  coat. 

By  means  of  this  Mendelian  law  it  is  thus  possible  to  predict 
what  will  happen  in  various  cases,  not  only  for  animals  but  for 
plants,  and  not  only  for  the  lower  animals  but  for  man  himself. 
Mendel  made  his  experiments  mostly  with  plants.  He  took 
garden  peas,  twenty-two  varieties.  He  crossed  them  and  he 
found  that  when  he  crossed  a  wrinkled  pea  with  a  smooth  pea  all 
the  children  were  smooth,  but  they  were  hybrids.  They  did  not 
show  any  difference  from  one  of  the  two  parents.  They  showed 
a  difference  from  the  others,  but  they  were  hybrids  nevertheless. 
They  were  not  really  thoroughbred  smooth  peas,  but  they  were 
hybrid  smooth  peas.  Then  he  mated  these  hybrid  smooth  peas 
with  each  other  and  the  peas  in  the  next  generation  were  one- 
quarter  wrinkled  and  three-quarters  smooth,  but  he  discovered 
that  of  those  three-quarters  only  one-quarter  was  really  smooth 
in  the  sense  that  it  would  breed  true  ever  after.  The  others 
were  hybrids  and  bred  just  like  their  parents.  Again  he 
took  peas  which  were  tall  and  mated  them  with  peas  that  were 
dwarfed  and  he  found  that  all  the  children  were  tall. 

In  other  words,  the  character  of  being  smooth  was  dominant 
and  the  character  of  being  wrinkled  was  recessive,  while  like- 
wise the  character  of  being  tall  was  dominant  and  the  character 
of  being  dwarf  was  recessive. 

Again  he  took  peas  according  to  the  color  of  the  flower — 
those  that  had  purple  flowers  and  those  that  had  white  flowers, 
and  he  found  that  purple  was  dominant  over  white.  When  the 
two  were  crossed  the  children  would  be  all  purple,  but  hybrid 
purple.  If  these  hybrid  purples  were  mated  with  each  other, 
he  found  that  one-quarter  of  the  next  generation  would  show 
white  again  according  to  the  Mendelian  law;  one-quarter  would 
be  thoroughbred  purple,  and  one-half  would  be  hybrid  purple. 
And  so  he  worked  with  a  number  of  other  varieties  of  peas  and 
other  plants. 


10  Eugenics 

Hp  HE  VARIOUS  CHARACTERS  OF  ROUGH  OR  SMOOTH,  long 
haired  or  short  haired,  white  or  black,  etc.,  are  inherited 
independently  of  one  another.  That  is  to  say,  the  child  takes 
from  the  mystic  baskets  one  pair  of  beans  relative  to  color,  an- 
other relative  to  hair  length,  another  relative  to  coat,  and  so  on, 
so  that  it  may  be,  for  instance,  long  haired  and  rough  coated, 
long  haired  and  smooth  coated,  short  haired  and  rough  coated, 
or  short  haired  and  smooth  coated. 

This  independent  inheritance  does  not  always  hold  true. 
Sometimes  two  traits  always  go  together  or  always  avoid  each 
other.  Again,  a  particular  trait  may  be  dominant  to  another 
trait  but  recessive  to  a  third,  or  dominant  in  the  male  and  re- 
cessive in  the  female.  Each  case  must  be  studied  by  itself,  but 
when  the  rule  is  found  it  can  be  depended  on  and  used  to 
predict  what  will  happen  in  other  like  cases. 

>T«HESE  LAWS  ARE  A  CURIOUS  MIXTURE  of  chance  and  cer- 
tainty. In  certain  circumstances,  as  we  have  seen,  we  can 
predict  with  certainty  that  the  offspring  will  be  black,  white, 
blue,  or  whatever  the  case  may  be.  In  other  circumstances  we 
can  only  state  what  the  chances  are.  But  these  chances  can  be 
definitely  stated  as  one  in  two,  one  in  four  or  whatever  it  may 
be,  and  where  there  are  large  numbers  of  offspring  this  amounts 
to  a  practical  certainty  that  definite  proportions  will  have  this  or 
that  color  or  other  characteristics. 

Evidently  such  definite  knowledge  can  be  made  useful,  and 
it  has  been  made  useful  in  England.  Professor  Biffen  has 
created,  to  order  as  it  were,  in  accordance  with  specifications 
drawn  up  officially,  certain  new  and  valuable  species  of  wheat. 
This  he  did  by  crossing  existing  species  so  as  to  ger"hybrids" 
without  the  undesirable  qualities  and  with  the  desirable  ones. 
One  species  of  wheat  is  resistant  to  "rust,"  another  has  a  stout 
stalk,  another  is  beardless,  another  bears  a  large  number  of 
grains  on  a  stalk,  another  a  large  yield  per  acre,  but  until 
Professor  Biffen  created  it,  no  species  possessed  all  these  possi- 


Eugenics  11 

bilities.  By  successive  crossing  of  the  existing  species,  however, 
he  finally  obtained  species  possessing  all  of  these  desirable 
qualities.  Moreover,  the  desirable  qualities  were  permanent 
because  the  other  or  undesirable  qualities  had  been  "bred  out.'* 

HpHE  SAME  MENDELIAN  PRINCIPLES  undoubtedly  apply  to 
**"  the  human  race,  although  as  yet  only  a  few  traits  have  been 
carefully  studied.  Eye  color  is  one  of  these.  Imagine  a 
marriage  of  a  thoroughbred,  black-eyed  Italian  with  a  thorough- 
bred, blue-eyed  Irish.  What  will  be  the  result?  All  the  chil- 
dren will  be  black-eyed,  black  being  dominant  over  blue;  but 
these  black  eyes  are  not  the  genuine  article  that  the  Italian 
parent  possessed.  They  are  a  blend,  and  it  is  only  because  the 
black  element  dominates  over  or  conceals  the  blue  element  that 
we  cannot  see  on  the  surface  that  there  is  any  blue  there.  But 
it  may  come  out  in  the  next  generation;  for,  if  these  half- 
blooded  individuals  marry  among  themselves  one-quarter  of 
their  children  on  the  average  will  be  blue-eyed.  The  other 
three-quarters  will  be  black-eyed,  but  only  one-quarter  will  be 
"really  and  truly"  black-eyed,  i.  e.,  black-eyed  like  the  Italian. 
The  remaining  half  are  hybrid  black,  like  the  parents.  It  is 
only  a  sort  of  imitation  black,  so  to  speak. 

The  appearance  of  blue  eyes  in  the  second  generation  is  the 
long  observed  but  formerly  mysterious  "atavism,"  or  reversion 
to  the  grandparent. 

^Text,  suppose  the  children  of  an  Italian  and  an 
A^  IRISH  PARENT  intermarry  with  pure  bred  Italians.  We 
immediately  know  what  will  be  the  result.  All  the  children 
will  be  black-eyed,  but  among  a  large  number  only  half  will  be 
thoroughbred  black-eyed.  The  other  half  will  be  "imitation" 
black-eyed.  The  case  is  just  like  the  mating  of  hybrid  black 
guinea  pigs  with  thoroughbred  black  guinea  pigs,  or  of  the 
blue  fowl  with  the  black.     Similarly  if  the  Irish-Italian  hybrids 


12  Eugenics 

marry  with  pure  Irish,  half  the  offspring  will  be  blue-eyed  and 
half  will  be  hybrid  black-eyed. 

Black  eyes  are  "dominant"  over  blue  eyes  because  the  black 
color  is  due  to  a  pigment  while  the  blue  color  is  due  to  the  ab- 
sence of  this  pigment.  In  general  a  quality  which  is  due  to  the 
presence  of  some  positive  element  is  dominant  over  a  quality  due 
to  the  absence  of  that  element.  A  child  inheriting  from  a  blue- 
eyed  person  simply  draws  a  blank  from  that  side  in  the  lottery. 


n^HE  CASE  OF  SKIN  COLOR  in  human  beings  is  more  compli- 
cated.  The  skin  color  of  an  African  is,  according  to  the 
findings  of  Doctor  Davenport,  not  a  unit  character  but  due  to 
four  factors.  Without  going  into  detailed  explanations  it 
follows,  and  the  facts  seem  to  substantiate  the  conclusion,  that 
(1)  the  children  (mulattos)  of  a  white  and  a  black  parent 
have  two  color  factors;  and  will  all  be  of  the  same  color  mid- 
way between  the  colors  of  the  parents;  (2)  the  children  of  trvo 
mulattos  will  still  be  mulatto;  (3)  the  offspring  (quadroon) 
of  a  mulatto  and  a  white  will  have  one  color  factor  and  will  all 
be  alike  midway  between  the  parents,  thus  bringing  us  to  a 
unit  character.  (4)  The  children  of  two  quadroons  will  be 
quadroons;  (5)  the  children  (octoroons)  of  a  quadroon  and 
a  white  will  be  all  quadroon  color  but  getting  this  color  from 
only  one  side  and  drawing  a  blank  as  it  were  from  the  other 
side,  they  will  be  quite  different  from  the  true  quadroons  so 
that  (6)  of  the  children  of  two  octoroons,  one-quarter  will  be 
white,  one-quarter  quadroons  and  a  half  octoroons,  like  the 
parents;  (7)  of  the  children  of  octoroons  and  white  half  will 
be  octoroon  and  half  will  be  white. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  when  a  white  octoroon  appears  the 
black  element  has  disappeared  completely  so  that  there  is  no 
danger  of  its  reappearance  in  later  generations  from  marriage 
with  Caucasians.     This  does  not  mean,  however,  that  all  negro 


Eugenics  13 

characteristics  such  as  wooly  hair,  flat  noses  or  thick  lips,  will 
disappear.  — -^C^ 

T>  UT,  YOU  SAY,  WHAT  HAS  ALL  THIS  TO  DO  WITH 
*~*  EUGENICS,  and  what  difference  does  it  make  whether  eye 
color  or  even  skin  color  is  one  thing  or  another?  It  makes  very 
little  difference,  indeed,  but  there  are  certain  qualities  that  are 
exceedingly  important.  There  are  certain  qualities  which  rank 
as  defective.  Feeble  mindedness  is  a  lack  of  a  very  important 
character.  Suppose  now  that  a  normal  or  "strong  minded" 
person,  if  we  may  use  that  term  as  distinct  from  feeble-minded, 
marries  a  feeble-minded  person.  Assuming  that  the  "strong- 
minded"  person  is  a  "thoroughbred,"  all  of  the  children  will 
be  apparently  normal.  None  will  be  feeble-minded.  "Strong- 
mindedness"  is  dominant  over  weak  mindedness.  Yet  all  these 
children  that  seem  to  be  perfectly  normal  lack  something  in 
their  bodies.  This  deficiency  is  simply  covered  up  but  can  crop 
out  in  later  generations.  If  two  of  these  hwprids  between  the 
weak-minded  and  the  strong-minded  marry  each  other,  one- 
quarter  of  the  children  will  be  feeble-minded,  one-quarter 
thoroughbred  strong-minded  and  the  remaining  half,  though  ap- 
parently strong-minded,  will  carry  the  taint  in  them  just  as  their 
parents  did.  They  are  half-breeds.  On  the  other  hand,  if  two 
feeble-minded  people  marry,  all  of  the  children  will  be  feeble- 
minded. Certainly  we  can  and  ought  to  forbid  and  prevent 
such  marriages. 

But  feeble-mindedness  is  a  recessive  quality,  so  that  if  the 
feeble-minded  marry  only  with  normal  individuals  the  feeble- 
mindedness does  not  blight  the  next  generation,  and  if  these  ap- 
parently normal  children  of  such  marriages  take  pains  to  marry 
only  really  normal  individuals,  avoiding  not  only  the  feeble- 
minded but  even  those  like  themselves  who  have  feeble-minded- 
ness on  one  side  of  their  family  tree,  there  will  be  no  feeble 
mindedness  cropping  out  in  future  generations.  The  same  obser- 
vations apply  to  deaf  mutism  and  some  other  defects. 


14  Eugenics 

"Out  not  all  human  abnormalties  are  recessive. 
*~*  Thus  Huntington's  chorea  is  dominant,  so  that  every  child 
of  the  unfortunate  victim  of  this  malady  will  contract  it  when  it 
reaches  the  right  age.  Marriages  of  such  people  should,  there- 
fore, never  be  allowed,  even  with  normal  individuals. 

But  when  we  propose  to  restrict  marriages  or  mating  of 
those  unfit  to  marry,  people  are  apt  to  say,  "That  is  a  dream.  It 
can't  be  done."  But  it  can  be  done  and  it  has  been  done. 
Every  one  has  heard  of  the  cretins  in  Switzerland.  They  are  a 
kind  of  idiot  who  are  short  in  stature  and  afflicted  in  all  cases 
with  goitre  in  the  neck.  Of  course,  many  people  have  goitre 
who  are  not  cretins,  but  there  is  no  cretin  who  has  not  goitre. 
These  cretins  are  peculiarly  a  feeble-minded  people.  They  are 
common  still  in  many  towns  of  Switzerland ;  they  are  loathsome 
objects,  helpless  as  children,  with  silly  smiles,  unable  to  take  care 
of  themselves  in  even  the  simplest  toilet  ways,  and  have  to  be 
looked  after  like  domestic  animals,  or  even  more  closely. 

A  GENTLEMAN  VERY  MUCH  INTERESTED  IN  EUGENICS 
■**•  visited  Aosta,  in  Italy,  just  outside  of  Switzerland  once  in 
1900  and  again  in  1910.  In  1900  he  found  many  of  these 
creatures  among  the  beggars  in  the  streets,  in  the  asylum,  in  the 
home,  in  the  orphan  asylum — everywhere  he  ran  across  these 
awful  apologies  for  human  beings.  But  in  1 9 1 0  he  found 
only  one!  What  had  happened?  Simply  that  a  few  resolute 
intelligent  reformers  had  changed  the  entire  situation.  An 
isolation  institution,  or  rather  trvo  institutions,  one  for  the  men 
and  the  other  for  the  women,  were  established.  In  these  the 
best  care  of  the  inmates  was  taken  as  long  as  they  lived,  and  „ 

they  do  not  live  long.      But  pains  were  taken  to  see  that  by  no  \ 

possibility  could  marriage  or  mating  of  those  people  take  place.  t 

They  forfeited  any  such  rights  in  return  for  the  care  that  they 
received  from  the  State. 

Thus  is  it  possible  to  apply  the  laws  of  heredity  as  laid 
down  by  Mendel  in  a  thoroughly  practical  way  and  to  get  re- 


Eugenics  15 

suits  immediately  in  one  short  generation.  It  seems,  and  it  is, 
a  colossal  task  to  change  average  human  nature  one  iota.  Yet 
in  the  light  of  modern  eugenics  we  could  make  a  new  human 
race  in  a  hundred  years  if  only  people  in  positions  of  power 
and  influence  would  wake  up  to  the  paramount  importance  of 
what  eugenics  means.  And  this  could  be  done  quietly  and 
simply  without  violence  to  existing  ideas  of  what  is  right  and 
proper.  It  could  be  done  by  segregation  of  the  sexes  for  de- 
fectives, feeble-minded,  idiots,  epileptics,  insane,  etc.  By  this 
kind  of  isolation,  we  can  save  the  blood  stream  of  our  race  from 
a  tremendous  amount  of  needless  contamination. 

And  it  is  being  done.  The  growing  tendency  to  put  de- 
fectives in  institutions,  though  originally  with  no  such  object, 
will  have  the  effect  of  reducing  the  transmission  of  defects, 
especially  when  it  is  recognized  that  the  sexes  must  be  separated 
and  that  the  inmates  should  be  kept  at  the  institution  through 
the  reproductive  period  of  life. 

O  TERILIZATION  IS  ALSO  A  MEANS  which  may  be  advantage- 
^  ously  applied  in  extreme  cases.  Sensible  marriage  laws  if 
backed  by  an  enlightened  public  opinion  can  add  much.  Every 
State  should  have  a  eugenics  board  authorized  to  pass  on  doubt- 
ful cases.  But  eugenic  laws  should  be  enacted  only  after  ap- 
proval by  those  who  possess  technical  knowledge  on  this  sub- 
ject, such  as  Doctor  Davenport.  Otherwise  we  are  in  danger 
of  foolish,  needless  and  even  harmful  legislation. 

TjEW  PEOPLE  have  any  idea,  unless  they  have  looked  into  the 
**•  pedigrees  of  some  of  these  people,  what  awful  contamination 
can  be  saved  the  race  by  a  wise  application  of  eugenics.  There 
is  a  family  called  "the  Jukes,"  all  descended  from  a  thriftless 
fisherman,  born  in  1 720.  About  twelve  hundred  of  these 
descendants  have  been  traced  in  75  years.  Of  these,  310  were 
professional  paupers  who  spent  an  aggregate  of  2,300  years  in 
poorhouses,    50    were    prostitutes,    7    murderers,    60    habitual 


16  Eugenics 

thieves  and  1  30  common  criminals.  Dugdale,  who  compiled 
these  facts,  estimated  that  the  "Juke"  family  cost  the  Govern- 
ment over  $  1 ,000  for  each  member  of  the  family.  Similarly 
the  "Tribe  of  Ishmael,"  numbering  1 ,692  individuals  in  six 
generations,  has  produced  1  2 1  known  prostitutes  and  has  bred 
hundreds  of  petty  thieves,  vagrants  and  murderers.  Compare 
the  descendants  of  that  family  with  the  descendants  of  Jona- 
than Edwards,  who  was  born  in  the  same  period  (1  703)  and 
who  has  had  about  the  same  number  of  descendants  (1,394 
traced  up  to  1900).  Out  of  those  descendants,  something  like 
half  have  been  public  men  or  men  of  great  distinction  and  good 
influence  in  the  world;  295  were  college  graduates,  about  100 
were  clergymen  or  missionaries,  over  1  00  were  lawyers,  80  held 
public  office,  75  were  officers  in  the  army  or  navy,  60  were 
eminent  writers,  30  were  judges,  1  3  were  college  presidents. 
A  similar  example  is  afforded  in  the  Darwin  family,  of  which, 
by  the  way,  Galton  was  a  member.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
human  heredity  plays  a  large  role  in  human  character. 

A  striking  example  of  the  contrast  between  good  and  bad 
heredity  is  afforded  by  two  sets  of  descendants  from  the  same 
man.  An  English  soldier,  a  well  endowed  man,  married  twice. 
His  first  wife  was  feeble-minded,  his  second,  a  normal  woman. 
Records  of  the  descendants  show  a  taint  of  feeble-mindedness 
running  through  the  children  of  the  first  marriage  and  none 
whatever  among  the  children  of  the  second. 

^pHE  SUBJECT  OF  EUGENICS  IS  INTIMATELY  RELATED  TO 
**■  HYGIENE.  Some  people  have  thought  that  hygiene  is  op- 
posed to  eugenics,  and  in  truth  this  may  in  many  cases  be  true. 
Misapplied  hygiene  is  likely  to  be  injurious  to  the  race.  I  was 
astonished  at  the  ignorance  of  a  university  president  with  whom 
I  conversed  some  years  ago.  He  was  very  enthusiastic  over 
hygiene  and  what  it  can  do.  He  said,  "I  know  of  a  girl  who 
had  many  ailments  and  disabilities.  She  had  a  surgical  opera- 
tion to  remedy  one  difficulty  and  special  treatment  to  remedy 


Eugenics  17 

others,  so  that  finally  she  was  so  repaired  and  improved  as  to 
be  made  over  into  quite  a  respectable  human  being,  and  now  she 
is  married.  Just  think  what  a  wonderful  thing  that  is."  Well 
the  truth  was  such  a  result  is  greatly  to  be  deplored.  The  hy- 
giene was  misapplied.  This  girl  was  really  defective,  and  the 
pity  of  it  is  that  her  children  and  grandchildren  and  great 
grandchildren  are  likely  to  have  a  certain  percentage  of  defects. 
The  lives  of  the  insane  of  this  country  have  been  prolonged  about 
eight  years  by  hygiene.  To  a  certain  extent  this  prolongation 
has  done  harm  because  the  insane  have  been  allowed  to  breed. 
In  Connecticut  there  was  a  half-witted  woman  in  an  asylum,  and 
a  farmer  near  by,  who  was  also  half-witted  but  was  not  in  the 
asylum,  asked  to  marry  her.  The  keeper  of  the  institution 
actually  did  not  know  any  better  than  to  say,  "Why,  of  course, 
I  will  be  glad  to  get  rid  of  her  support."  And  so  they  married, 
and  in  the  course  of  another  generation,  both  of  them  came  back 
to  the  institution  with  seven  idiotic  children!  When  the  superin- 
tendent got  rid  of  the  woman's  support  it  was  a  "penny  wise  and 
pound  foolish"  economy. 

But  hygiene  need  not  interfere  with  and  may  supplement 
eugenics.     Eugenics  is  simply  the  hygiene  of  future  generations. 

There  are  two  special  points  of  contact  between  hygiene  and 
eugenics  which  ought  to  be  mentioned.  One  is  in  relation  to 
alcohol.  Experiments  with  hens  and  with  guinea  pigs  have 
shown  that  merely  inhaling  fumes  of  alcohol  spoils  the  germ 
plasm  and  a  large  percentage  of  the  children  of  the  animals  that 
have  been  affected  by  alcohol  have  been  deformed.  The 
chickens  and  the  guinea  pigs  that  come  from  alcoholic  an- 
cestry will  be,  according  to  the  Mendelian  laws,  deformed. 
Now  we  cannot  experiment  with  human  beings,  but  we  can  ob- 
serve (and  Forel,  in  Switzerland,  and  others  have  made  observa- 
tions which,  if  they  do  not  prove,  certainly  make  it  reasonably 
certain  to  any  fair  minded  man  or  woman)  that  the  alcoholic 
taint  can  and  does  affect  the  germ  plasm  of  which  future  genera- 


18  Eugenics 

tions  are  made.     It  is  unreasonable  to  infer  that  any  unhygienic 
habits,  even  bad  diet,  may  to  some  extent  disturb  the  germ  plasm. 

HpHE  OTHER  POINT  OF  CONTACT  betewen  hygiene  and 
eugenics  is  called  "social  hygiene."  One  of  the  two  great 
diseases  associated  with  immorality  is  inherited  and  the  other 
may  also  blight  the  child's  health,  especially  as  to  eye  sight.  It 
is  an  awful  thing  to  think  that  any  human  being  can  take  the 
responsibility  or  run  the  risk  of  cursing  future  generations.  Half 
of  the  infantile  congenital  blindness  of  the  world  today  comes 
about  in  this  way.  I  knew  of  a  young  man  who  married  and 
had  one  normal  child.  But  the  second  child  was  born  blind. 
His  doctor  explained  it  to  him,  that  not  all  who  thought  them- 
selves cured  of  this  disease  which  he  had  contracted  as  a  young 
man  are  really  cured.  As  to  that  disease  one  can  never  be 
sure  whether  he  is  cured  or  not.  In  talking  to  young  men  on  this 
subject,  I  find  that  the  best  appeal  to  them  is  the  eugenic  ap- 
peal. It  does  not  always  work  to  tell  a  young  man  to  refrain 
from  immorality  because  of  the  danger  to  himself.  He  may 
take  that  as  a  "dare."  Besides  it  does  not  put  the  subject  on  a 
sufficiently  high  plane.  It  must  be  explained  to  him  that  it  is 
wrong  and  it  must  be  explained  to  him  why  it  is  wrong.  Now 
it  is  fundamentally  wrong  because  he  carries  within  his  body 
the  germ  plasm  of  which  he  is  the  custodian  for  future  genera- 
tions. It  does  not  belong  to  him.  It  is  not  for  him  to  risk  or  to 
injure.  It  is  something  that  he  carries  in  trust;  it  is  something  he 
must  guard  as  the  most  precious  possession  possible.  He  must 
be  on  the  side  of  morality  because  that  is  being  on  the  side  of 
the  Human  race.  It  is  easy  to  get  a  young  man  interested  in  the 
white  slave  traffic  and  to^  get  him  interested  to  fight  the  white 
slave  traffic.  As  soon  as  he  is  interested  enough  he  begins  to 
see  that  he  cannot  be  on  both  sides  at  once.  If  he  wants  to  fight 
the  under  world  he  must  not  become  a  traitor  to  the  side  for 
which  he  is  fighting,  and  patronizing  the  underworld  is  dis- 
loyalty of  the  rankest  kind, — the  disloyalty  to  his  own  family,  his 


Eugenics  19 

own  home,  as  well  as  to  the  institution  of  the  family  and  the 
home.  I  say  to  young  men,  "When  you  are  married  men  you 
expect  to  be  faithful  and  true.  You  would  not  respect  your 
father  if  he  were  not  faithful  to  your  mother.  Carry  this  a 
step  farther:  when  you  are  engaged,  and  even  before  you  are 
engaged,  you  should  hold  it  as  a  matter  of  honor  and  of  true 
fidelity  to  be  just  as  faithful  as  after  you  are  married.  Another 
step:  before  you  are  engaged,  you  owe  it  to  the  girl  you  are 
going  to  get  engaged  to,  to  do  for  her  what  you  would  expect 
her  to  do  for  you,  namely,  to  bring  to  her  a  pure  body.  You 
may  not  know  who  she  is.  but  she  is  now  living  somewhere  and 
reserving  herself  for  you."  It  is  easy  to  get  young  men  to  see 
that  the  double  standard  is  false  and  that  only  the  true  and  old- 
fashioned  ten  commandment  morality  is  right. 

^pHIS  LEADS  ME  TO  SAY  THAT  EUGENICS  IS  A  WONDERFUL 
A  TOUCHSTONE.  I  believe  eugenics  will  be  in  the  future  the 
essential  foundation  of  ethics.  Today,  ethics  is  purely  empirical. 
We  teach  at  the  mother's  knee  certain  things  to  be  right  and  cer- 
tain things  to  be  wrong,  and  they  generally  are  right  and  wrong 
respectivelv.  And  yet  we  cannot  explain  why  they  are  right  and 
wrong.  WTien  the  children  ask  us  "Why?"  we  usually  put  them 
off  by  saving  "Because  it  is  right,"  or  we  put  young  men  off  bv 
metaphysics  and  say,  "Because  of  the  catagorical  imperative,'' 
as  Kant  expressed  it.  But  this  does  not  satisfy,  and  the  failure 
to  satisfy  is  one  reason  for  immorality  in  the  world.  There  is  not 
yet  an  accepted  scientific  foundation  for  right  and  wrong.  I 
verily  believe  that  eugenics  is  going  to  supply  such  a  foundation. 
Some  people  say  thev  don't  think  eugenics  is  right;  they  don't 
think  it  is  right  to  talk  about  these  things;  they  don't  think  that 
it  is  right  to  try  to  interfere  with  marriage.  There  are  many 
things  these  people  don't  think  is  right  because  they  have  a  false 
and  conventional  standard.  But  the  time  will  come  when,  in- 
stead of  asking  whether  eugenics  is  right  or  wrong  according  to 
some  false  conventional  standard,  we  shall  ask  ourselves  whether 


20  Eugenics 

these  conventional  standards  are  right  or  wrong  according  to 
the  standard  of  eugenics,  the  highest  standard  there  is. 

A  ND  SO  IT  WILL  SOME  DAY  COME  ABOUT  that  we  shall  rea- 
***■  lize  the  dream  of  the  founder  of  this  science,  Sir  Francis 
Galton,  and  will  link  up  eugenics  with  religion.  A  generation 
ago  much  was  said  of  the  conflict  between  science  and  religion; 
and  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  at  first  religion  frowned  on  new 
scientific  discoveries.  It  frowned  on  the  discoveiy  of  the  ro- 
tundity of  the  earth,  of  the  motion  of  the  earth,  of  the  geological 
periods  of  evolution  according  to  Darwin,  and  of  a  great  many 
other  things.  Some  of  the  greatest  saints  in  science,  like  Galileo 
and  Bruno,  were  imprisoned  and  tortured  because  they  would 
not  prostitute  their  love  of  truth  for  the  conventional  religion  of 
the  day.  Now  I  was  fearful  at  first  that  we  should  have  another 
unpleasant  spectacle  of  a  conflict  between  conventional  religion 
and  this  new  science  of  eugenics,  and  if  you  will  watch  the  news- 
papers as  I  have  been  watching  them  during  the  last  year,  you 
will  see  occasional  evidences  cf  that  today.  One  of  the  evidences 
of  it  came  to  me  some  years  ago  when  David  Starr  Jordan, 
President  of  Leland  Stanford  University,  and  I  both  spoke  be- 
fore the  New  York  Peace  Society.  We  talked  about  the  re- 
lation of  eugenics  to  war.  President  Jordan  showed  that  war 
was  non-eugenic  and  therefore  wrong.  War  is  wrong  today  be- 
cause it  takes  the  very  best  young  men  who  ought  to  be  the 
fathers  of  the  next  generation  and  makes  them  targets  for  the 
bullets  of  our  neighbors.  War  is  thus  a  cause  of  degeneration. 
The  Napoleonic  Wars  were  largely  responsible,  President 
Jordan  thought,  for  the  reduction  in  stature  of  the  French.  The 
tall  men  were  sent  to  war. 

7V  FTER  WE  HAD  FINISHED  our  presentation  of  the  subject  a 
"^^  clergyman  got  up  and  said,  "I  disagree  with  the  gentlemen 
who  have  spoken;  men  and  women  are  not  bred  like  sheep." 
This  clergyman  condemned  at  once  the  ideas  we  stood  for  be- 


Eugenics  21 

cause  he  had  a  narrow  theological  dogma  that  was  impeding  in 
his  brain  the  reception  of  a  new  idea.  But  I  am  glad  to  note 
that  such  men  are  exceptional  today.  There  is  no  conflict  in 
evidence,  except  in  very  rare  cases,  between  science  and 
eugenics.  On  the  contrary,  for  once  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
religion  is  accepting  with  open  arms  this  eugenics  as  a  new  ally 
for  morality.  Dean  Sumner  was  one  of  the  first  to  link  up  re- 
ligion with  eugenics  when  he  proclaimed  in  Chicago  that  in  his 
church  there  would  thereafter  be  no  marriages  solemnized  unless 
the  contracting  parties  should  come  prepared  with  statements 
from  physicians  showing  that  they  were  fit  to  be  parents  of  the 
human  race.  Since  he  did  that,  hundreds  of  clergymen  and 
scores  of  clerical  bodies  and  scientific  bodies  have  passed  resolu- 
tions favoring  such  a  measure. 

Come  people  altogether  miss  the  point  of  this 
&  RELIGIOUS  SANCTION  of  eugenic  marriages.  It  is  not 
that  it  will  prevent  any  persons  from  getting  married  who  wish 
to  outrage  eugenic  laws.  They  can  easily  find  plenty  of  places 
where  they  can  get  married  without  medical  certificates.  But 
the  fact  that  religion  approves  of  eugenic  marriages  and  disap- 
proves of  non-eugenic  marriages  will  reform  public  opinion  and 
ultimately  make  unsuitable  marriages  as  incident  as  incest  is  to- 
day. This  public  opinion  when  it  is  full  grown  will  not  be 
simply  a  dull  and  lazy  approval  of  eugenics,  but  a  religious 
fervor.  We  shall  make  of  eugenics  the  biggest  pillar  of  the 
church,  and  eugenics  will  become  embedded  in  the  religion  of 
the  future.  It  shall  happen  hereafter  that  instead  of  conflicts 
between  science  and  religion,  these  two  great  human  interests  will 
be  marching  together,  hand  in  hand. 


PROCEEDINGS 

The  National  Conference  on  Race 
Betterment 

The  National  Conference  on  Race  Betterment  which  con- 
vened at  Battle  Creek  January  8th  to  1  2th,  marked  a  new  era 
in  human  welfare  work.  At  this  meeting  there  came  together 
leaders  in  the  various  movements  represented  by  sociology, 
eugenics,  biology,  physiology,  psychology,  education,  etc. 
Among  those  present  were  Dr.  C.  B.  Davenport,  Director  of 
the  Carnegie  Station  of  Experimental  Evolution;  Rev.  Newell 
Dwight  Hillis;  Hon.  Jacob  Riis,  head  of  the  Jacob  Riis 
Neighborhood  Settlement,  New  York;  Judge  Ben  Lindsey  of 
the  Denver  Juvenile  Court;  Prof.  Graham  Taylor,  President 
of  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy;  Dr.  Win- 
field  Scott  Hall,  Professor  of  Physiology  in  the  Northwestern 
University;  Mr.  Frederick  L.  Hoffman,  Statistician  of  the 
Prudential  Life  Insurance  Company;  Mr.  E.  E.  Rittenhouse, 
Conservation  Commissioner  of  the  Equitable  Life  Insurance 
Company;  Dr.  J.  N.  Hurty,  Secretary  of  the  Indiana  State 
Board  of  Health;  Dr.  D.  A.  Sargent,  Harvard  University; 
Mr.  Arthur  Hunter,  Actuary  of  the  New  York  Life  Insurance 
Company. 

The  program  covered  every  field  of  welfare  endeavor  and 
brought  out  information  that  will  make  possible  a  basis  for  a 
broader,  more  intelligent,  more  efficient  social  program  for  the 
future. 

Proceedings  of  the  Conference  have  been  published  in  full. 
The  volume  comprises  a  mine  of  practical  information  that 
should  be  available  not  only  to  every  social  worker,  but  to  every 
person  interested  not  only  in  his  own  welfare,  but  in  that  of  his 
neighborhood.      Price  one  dollar. 

Address, 

GOOD  HEALTH  PUBLISHING  CO., 

Battle  Creek,  Mich. 


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